Numbers You Won’t Find in Box Scores

Jon Morgan of the Baltimore Sun writes that the players in tonight’s All-Star game will probably be the most highly paid group of athletes ever assembled:

“The highest is the Chicago Cubs’ Ryne Sandberg at $6.475 million a year. The lowest is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mike Piazza, a steal at $126,000.

“The 56 All-Stars will earn a combined $148 million this year in salaries. The average of $2.64 million is about three times baseball’s average.

“The highest-paid player not to make the starting lineup: New York Met outfielder Bobby Bonilla, at $6.2 million.”

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Trivia time: Which pitcher holds the career record for most strikeouts in the All-Star game?

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Equal opportunity: “What the National League should do is pick nine relievers and have them work one inning each,” Cincinnati relief pitcher Rob Dibble told Jerome Holtzman of the Chicago Tribune in reference to the All-Star game.

Holtzman writes that something very similar happened once in modern baseball history. On Oct. 2, 1949, the last day of the season, the St. Louis Browns used a different pitcher in each inning of the first game of a doubleheader with the Chicago White Sox.

The result? The Browns lost, 4-3.

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Add pitchers: The Browns’ pitching parade, in order: Ned Garver, Joe Ostrowski, Cliff Fannin, Tom Ferrick, Karl Drews, Bill Kennedy, Al Papai, Red Embree and Dick Starr.

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Women’s lib? England’s Royal St. George’s, founded in 1887 and site of the British Open beginning Thursday, is ultraconservative--or backward.

“Officially, the club does not acknowledge the existence of women,” writes Peter Dobereiner in Golf Digest. “As a result . . . women enjoy free golf on the course, because the club cannot bar that which does not exist.

“When Fiona Macdonald made the Cambridge University golf team, it posed a problem for the annual match against St. George’s. The solution? A special committee elected her an honorary man for the day.”

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Night owls: In the recent rain-delayed doubleheader between Philadelphia and San Diego that didn’t end until nearly 5 a.m., the players were getting a little giddy.

“You began to hear comments like, ‘That’s the best slide I’v ever seen at 2 in the morning,’ ” Padre outfielder Tony Gwynn said. “Or, ‘Best curveball I ever saw at 3.’ ”

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Available: Mark Clayton, the former Miami Dolphin wide receiver, now with Green Bay, observed that Miami Coach Don Shula has a new office that includes a new chair where players being disciplined are to sit.

“I’m not (with the Dolphins) anymore, but maybe the old man will call me up there just so I can break it in for him,” Clayton told the Miami Herald.

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Trivia answer: Don Drysdale, with 19 in eight games.

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Quotebook: Philadelphia’s John Kruk, after winning the balloting to start at first base for the National League team in the All-Star game: “It’s amazing that fans want to see me play. What is our society coming to?”